FITCHBURG -- When Tony Rodriguez came to Fitchburg from Brooklyn almost 10 years ago, he was a self-described mess.

He was five years clean from a 12-year heroin addiction, but facing physical, mental and financial struggles, he was on the precipice of erasing those years of progress he'd made -- until a friend encouraged him to seek help at Community Health Connections.

"I was one step away from going back to my old lifestyle," Rodriguez said. "I was just at the point in my life where it was either come here and get help or go back to the streets and do things I'm not proud of."

Today, Rodriguez, 49, celebrates 15 years clean and sober and has a full-time job at a cardboard box-making plant. He points to the care he received at CHC -- along with his two daughters, Anisiah, 3, and Elyanah, 13 -- for keeping him on track.

Rodriguez is one of the growing number of local patients whose lives have been improved by the comprehensive medical services offered at CHC, the impact of which is only expected to grow with the opening of its new Fitchburg Family Health Center, currently at 90 percent completion.

Rodriguez said he had been through many detoxification programs that didn't work before walking through the doors of CHC, and felt in each previous situation that those who claimed to be trying to help didn't trust him, and he hated the lack of freedom that came with having to go to a methadone clinic each day.

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But when he met his primary care physician, Dr. Kathleen Sweeney, he bonded with her.

He didn't have health insurance, so CHC staff helped to connect him to insurance available through the state when he was unemployed so that he wouldn't be left in debt with medical bills.

Sweeney put him into an addiction-management program involving suboxone, Rodriguez said, a drug that staves away his cravings and eases his chronic back pain. He is able to fill his prescription at CHC through its pharmacy service, and take it with him to use on his own.

Rodriguez said having a doctor that has the trust in him to be able to do what's right for himself keeps him honest, and he feels he can't lie to Sweeney or let her down.

"I truly believe that woman saved my life," he said.

Rodriguez said he has a great deal of respect and admiration for Sweeney, and that she is more than a doctor to him -- she's a friend.

Medical staff at CHC also helped Jane Crocker, 61, of Leominster, to get through a tough time in her life. She had been a patient of Fitchburg Family Practice since 1991, transitioning to CHC when it opened in 2002.

For eight years, Crocker's husband, Dexter, struggled with Lewy body dementia, a form of dementia accompanying Parkinson's disease. That time was very stressful for Crocker, who was both working full-time and acting as the sole, full-time caregiver for her husband.

"If he had to get up during the night, I had to get up, too," she said. "I wasn't sleeping."

While medical staff cared for him, she was assisted by behavioral health specialists, including Psychologist Nicholas Apostoleris, who gave her someone to talk to about the difficulties she and her family were experiencing.

"He helped me to understand the illness, and work through it, and be able to discuss the changes that were happening in my husband's health," Crocker said.

When Dexter Crocker passed away in 2006 at the age of 64, Jane Crocker's medical team helped her through the loss. Some, like Nurse Practitioner Barbara Sullivan, reached out to her personally to offer their condolences.

"I was impressed," Crocker said. "You don't get that from every doctor."

That same year, she joined the CHC board of directors, more than half of which are patients.

Crocker said her experience overall with CHC has been positive, and she wanted to contribute to its operation and advancement.

"I have found that there has always been teamwork among the departments," she said. "The caregivers care about you as a whole person, not just about your medical health. I've always been treated with care and concern."

Crocker said she has always been able to get appointments without much of a wait -- a maximum of two weeks but usually much less than that -- and has always felt that staff give her their undivided attention and plenty of time to listen and respond to her questions.

She has pledged three years of financial support to the new center, and hopes that others in the community will offer theirs.

"This new community health center is important because it will take care of all the needs of the people in the community who may not have other resources or other health care," Crocker said. "They'll get quality care here by a very professional and caring staff."

CHC has also had a lasting impact on Vinny Prendergast, 56, of Fitchburg, and his family.

When Prendergast, his wife, five children and mother-in-law moved to the city in 1989 from Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland, they chose to live close to Burbank Hospital in case his youngest daughter, only 9 months old at the time, needed emergency care.

Prendergast remembers the first time he walked into the Bullock Building, currently occupied by CHC, when he was seeking information on what sort of vaccinations his children would need to start school. He was immediately struck by a plaque he saw in memory of Gardner and Sarah Burbank, who donated their fortune to build the hospital in 1900.

"Where all who could should pay but where those who are in poverty and sickness shall ever be received and cared for kindly and tenderly 'without money and without price' and without the regard to color or nationality," Prendergast read.

The concept of equal and fair distribution of health care meant a great deal to Prendergast as a new immigrant in this country, and it is the concept that CHC was built upon.

In that same first visit, he met Dr. Peter McConnarty, who remains his primary care physician to this day.

"He's very personable," Prendergast said. "He takes medicine down to your everyday living. He's not one for fancy words or anything like that -- he explains concepts very well."

He said he also appreciated the wide range of hours he would be able to schedule doctor appointments, given the odd, rotating hours he worked at the city's wastewater treatment plant.

Over the years, Prendergast and his family formed relationships with the medical staff members and their families, seeing them both in the office and out in the community during sports games and other events. He believes those relationships played a large role in two of his sons choosing careers in medicine.

"I think they were able to see the mix and the integration into the community, that these people didn't just work here--they were part of the community at large," Prendergast said.

He has also contributed to the campaign to finish the new health center, and believes others should do the same, as it is a community resource.

"It behooves you in the same way you have been helped to help the next person behind you," Prendergast said.

He said CHC is a community-based health care system, for the community.

"It should be by the community, this is your chance to make it for the community completely," Prendergast said. "We are here to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, as a community. In doing that, we're hoping to widen the net of care and also contribution so it can be self-sustaining--and here we are in the homestretch."

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